Chandigarh gets its investiture: Cinévesture International Film Festival

Rana Dagubatti, Jérôme Paillard, Julian Friedmann, Nicole Guillemet, Nuhash Humayaun, and Ajitpal Singh must be familiar names to film festival buffs. Now they have come together to serve on the Advisory Board of a film festival, which will be held in the northern Indian city of Chandigarh, a city that serves as the capital of two states, Punjab and Haryana. The festival is called Cinévesture International Film Festival (CIFF). It will say “Action” on 27^th March and “Pack-up” on 31^st.

Rana is the really tall bad man of Indian films, who is so gentle at heart. He comes from the illustrious Dagubatti Rama Naidu (producer) and Venkatesh (star actor) family. 68 year-old Paillard was head of Cannes ‘Marché du Film’ (Film Market), the world’s largest film market, from 1995 to 2022. When he took over, the Marché was nothing like what it is now. It was quite small, with a few screening rooms in the basement of the Palais below Cannes’ legendary red carpet. Quite early in his career, in 1998, he took the revolutionary step of setting-up of the online site Cannesmarket.com, which eventually became Cinando, the first choice B2B platform for the global film industry.

With tons of experience, comes Julian Friedmann, author of the Make Money Screenwriting books and co-owner of the Blake Friedmann Literary Agency, where he represents both book and scriptwriters, and also act as an Executive Producer for clients. He has taught at universities and film schools all over the world and his TED Talk on storytelling has been viewed over 950,000 times. Julian Friedmann has worked with writers for over 40 years; he believes understanding that storytelling is more about the audience than the writer will result in better storytelling.

Frenchwoman Nicole Guillemet is the Programmer at El Gouna Film Festival. She is also the Former Director at Miami International Film Festival and former VP, Sundance Institute/Co-Director Sundance Film Festival at Sundance Institute. Nicole studied Business Management at The University of Utah. She lives in New York. Guillemet was Executive Producer of Lovers (2019) and The Dhamma Brothers (2008).

From neighbouring BanglaDesh, 32 year-old Nuhash Humayun is a writer, director, and visual artist, based in Dhaka. He made his debut with the anthology film Sincerely Yours, Dhaka (2018) which premièred at the Busan International Film Festival and enjoyed a successful festival run, later acquired by Netflix. Nuhash is also a fellow of the Asian Film Academy 2019, directing the LGBTQ drama Lipstick (2019). Nuhash’s narrative feature Moving Bangladesh was selected for Film Independent’s Producer Lab 2022, Cannes Marché du Film, 2021, Locarno Film Festival’s Open Doors Consultancy 2020, and NFDC’s Film Bazaar Co-Production Market, 2020. Ajitpal Singh is known for (Sundance) Fire in the Mountains (2021), the Sony LIV web series, Tabbar (2021), and the short, Rammat-Gammat (2018). Hailing from Punjab, Ajitpal had to move to Gujarat with his family as a result of severe adversities suffered due to the Punjab insurgency. Singh is currently working on a horror film, set in Kashmir.

Those were the members of the Advisory Board. Now meet the two women who are the pillars in running the show. CIFF’s Artistic Director, Bina Paul, works mainly in Malayalam-language films. She has over 50 editing credits and has directed four documentaries. Her first editing work was in 1985 on Aravindan’s documentary The Seer Who Walks Alone, and her first feature film work was on Abraham’s Amma Ariyan, in 1986. Paul won her first National Film Award for Revathi’s Mitr, My Friend, which had an all-woman crew. She has collaborated with other women film-makers like Suma Josson, Pamela Rooks and Shabnam Virmani. Paul has been the artistic director of the International Film Festival of Kerala.

Cinévesture is the brain-child of Nin Lath Gupta. Now 59, Nina took over as Managing Director at the National Film Development Corporation of India (NFDC), in 2006. At that time, it had negative net worth, huge losses and 250 employees. By 2017, it had a topline of Rs 116 crore and turned profitable, with employee strength reduced to 93. Between 2007 and 2017, NFDC produced 27 films, across 13 languages, and launched 18 directors. Many of these films—The Lunchbox (2013), Ship of Theseus (2013) and Court (Marathi, 2014)—have been critically acclaimed. Anhe Ghore Da Daan (Alms for a Blind Horse, Punjabi, 2012), bagged the Golden Peacock award at the 43rd International Film Festival of India. But Lath Gupta’s biggest achievement was the creation of Film Bazaar, South Asia’s largest bazaar to market independent films under one umbrella. It was, and still is, held concurrently with the International Film Festival of India, in November every year, in Goa.

In 2018, the Information & Broadcasting Ministry, NFDC’s parent Ministry, removed Nina Lath Gupta from the post of Managing Director of NFDC, for allegedly not following protocol in conducting the government company’s corporate affairs. Nina challenged the decision and went to court. Five years later, in May 2023, the Supreme Court held that services of the petitioner have been illegally terminated, based upon allegations of misconduct, that too without affording her an opportunity of hearing or conducting an inquiry into the alleged misconduct, which is in total contravention of the Service Rules of National Film Development Corporation, which are duly applicable to the Petitioner. Judge Jyoti Singh quashed and set aside the impugned order, and directed the respondents to pay all outstanding dues of the petitioner, on account of salary and other allowances, for the balance tenure of about 2 years 11 months.

In the meanwhile, Nina did not let anything stop her crusading spirit in cinema. Under the umbrella of Cinévesture, she offered complimentary participation in a live, interactive, online workshop, to a select few, on Script, Supervision, Continuity and Copy, in September 2021. An excerpt from her piece, published in May 2023, on LogLine, Synopsis, Story Layout reads, “The process of writing begins as we gestate on the film/show. Your initial written material will most likely differ vastly from the screenplay/ story in its final form. You would want to update all your writing material in sync with your latest end product and ensure that it is correctly aligned to the same before you put it out there in the market.”

Next came a Scheduling and Budgeting Workshop, for Films and Series, which was held at walking distance from my house, in Mumbai, and also in Hyderabad, but I missed it altogether. Then, on February 05, 2024, she announced CIFF.

Film-critic Namrata Joshi serves as market curator at CIFF,

while V.S. Kundu, former head of the Films Division (FD, now dissolved and merged with the NFDC), in Mumbai, is the festival director. Kundu was Festival Director of the Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF), the biennial event showcasing documentaries, shorts and animation films, hitherto organised by the FD, since 1990.